Share this article
Visa Tests Way to Make Paying Ethereum Gas Fees Easier
The process is too complex for the masses, the company said.
Updated Aug 11, 2023, 6:46 p.m. Published Aug 11, 2023, 5:22 p.m.
Paying fees for transactions on the Ethereum blockchain is too complicated for most people.
That's the belief of credit-card giant Visa (V). It has completed testing a new way to allow users to pay the fees, known as "gas fees," in fiat currency with their credit card, the company wrote in a blog post on Thursday.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
The payments company said blockchain technology could “shape the future of money movement” and has gained significant adoption in the past few years. However, facilitating transactions on-chain remains too complex for most users.
Every time a user conducts a transaction on Ethereum, he or she must pay a gas fee. That includes sending and receiving ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain, over the blockchain. Managing a user's ETH balance to cover those costs is “burdensome,” Visa said in the blog post. Eliminating the complexity could make blockchain-based transactions more accessible and user-friendly, Visa added.
“When comparing the complex nature of blockchain transactions with the simplicity of fiat-based payment transactions supported by the Visa network, it becomes evident that improvement is needed,” Visa said.
To bridge the gap, Visa suggests leveraging Ethereum’s ERC-4337, the current standard that enables smart contracts on the blockchain to serve as wallets via a process called "account abstraction," and a paymaster contract — a smart-contract account that can sponsor gas fees on behalf of the user. The service would allow users to use a Visa card to pay directly for gas fees.
Testing of this process was performed on the Ethereum Goerli "testnet," a test network for Ethereum.
Visa said merchants or decentralized applications could run their paymaster system or use an existing wallet to make transactions easier. The paymaster service providers could also offer a choice of card-based gas fee payment, among other options.
The payments company has been active in the crypto sector for a while, experimenting with different projects. In February, Visa looked into how to convert digital assets into fiat payments.
Read more: Visa's Crypto Strategy Remains Intact Despite Crypto Winter
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
French Banking Giant BPCE to Roll Out Crypto Trading for 2M Retail Clients
The service will allow customers to buy and sell BTC, ETH, SOL, and USDC through a separate digital asset account managed by Hexarq.
What to know:
- French banking group BPCE will start offering crypto trading services to 2 million retail customers through its Banque Populaire and Caisse d’Épargne apps, with plans to expand to 12 million customers by 2026.
- The service will allow customers to buy and sell BTC, ETH, SOL, and USDC through a separate digital asset account managed by Hexarq, with a €2.99 monthly fee and 1.5% transaction commission.
- The move follows similar initiatives by other European banks, such as BBVA, Santander, and Raiffeisen Bank, which have already started offering crypto trading services to their customers.
Top Stories
